Dinner Plans
by Ellen Brand
Summary: Third in the "Working Lunch" series. Phil Coulson has a lot of paths before him, including a new job offer.


Disclaimer: The Avengers and all members of the MCU belong to Marvel and thus Disney. Max Steel belongs to Sony/Tristar, Mattel, Foundation Imaging, and Mainframe Entertainment. Mostly Mattel, though. This is the third and probably last story in the "Working Lunch" universe. Rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for language. This story is NOT Agents of SHIELD compliant. Season one may have happened in the broadest strokes, but if there are conflicts with canon, well, it's a slight AU.

 **Dinner Plans**

Phil's first, blurry thought on hearing the buzzing noise beside him was to reach out to slap the alarm clock on the bedside table into silence. His hand passed through empty air, however, and as his head cleared a bit, he remembered- he didn't have an alarm clock. Or a bedside table, or to be absolutely precise, a bed. He was sleeping on an emergency cot in a mothballed SHIELD base, where he and his team- well, what was left of it- had crashed after dealing finally with both Cybertek and John Garrett. He'd thought about following up on the information in the "toolbox" Fury had dropped off for him, but honestly? Right now, he was too tired, too battered, and maybe a little too heartsick to think about following in his old friend's footsteps as Director of SHIELD, an organization that was going to need rebuilding from the ground up.

Annnd his thoughts were rambling again, damn it. Forcing himself to focus, he managed to find the source of the buzzing- his cell phone. The cell phone whose number he'd been assured by a pair of geniuses had a brand new number, one that wasn't on file anywhere in SHIELD, or anywhere else for that matter. Caller ID showed "blocked," of course. Phil stared at it for a few more minutes, then shrugged and picked it up. It might be a telemarketer, or a charity canvasser. Autodialers had pulled off weirder things, he knew, including calling various government nuclear hotlines.

"Hello?" he ventured, managing to clear most of the sleep out of his voice. He mostly expected a stranger, or maybe Nick being his usual meddling self, but the chuckle that greeted him was familiar, and very definitely not Nick Fury.

"Hello, Cheese," Jefferson Smith greeted him. "Sorry for waking you up, but I thought this might be a good time to talk."

Afterwards, Phil would always blame the fact that he'd had maybe five hours of sleep for the fact that he pulled the phone away from his ear and stared stupidly at it for at least thirty seconds. The last time he'd seen Jefferson Smith in person had been… seventeen years ago, at Jim McGrath's funeral. Phil knew Nick had kept in contact, but given the demands of their respective agencies, and the fact that Jeff was now raising a precocious and grieving four year old boy, it just… hadn't worked out. There'd been a phone call or two, and of course, Phil'd seen Jeff doing his CEO thing on TV once or twice, but…

Putting the phone back to his ear, Phil cleared his throat. "Sorry, Jeff, I'm still waking up… talk? About what?"

"About the mess Mad-Eye Moody dropped in our respective laps, and what we're going to do about it. I'm currently at a roadside diner about… ten miles down the highway from where you're holed up. Want to meet me for dinner?"

"It's three AM, Jeff."

"Okay, then, breakfast. At least you can be sure it won't be fish and chips, right?"

Phil laughed, a little helplessly, and ran a hand over his face. Well. Why not? Might as well go into tomorrow with all the possible options and honestly, if this was a trap, Jeff already knew where they were, so… at least he could buy the rest of the team some time.

"Yeah, sure. I'll be there in thirty."

* * *

Half an hour later, Phil had showered, dressed in the jeans and leather jacket most of SHIELD would swear he didn't own, and driven himself down the highway to the diner Jeff had mentioned. Melinda had been briefed and prepped to move everyone else out if necessary; he hadn't even had to wake her up, of course. He wasn't going to think about that too hard. Not yet, anyway.

Pulling his car into the lot, he took in his surroundings with a casual glance. Silver Toyota Corolla parked up by the entrance- that was probably Jeff's, that kind of nondescript car was irresistible to spies. Kawasaki racing bike, blue and silver, parked over on the left side where it wouldn't get run over. Mostly clean; a street bike, then, occasionally ridden in bad weather but not off-road. And a sixteen-wheeler parked in the truck section of the lot, on the other side of the diner, obviously closer to the end of its run than the beginning, given the dirt encrusted on the wheels and undercarriage.

The truck could certainly be a mobile command center, but it was parked in a really bad area for staging an assault team from, and if the nebulous "they" were going to blow him up with a missile, they wouldn't have bothered luring him out of the base for it. Adjusting his jacket, he headed for the building and pushed open the door.

Reasonably clean, if worn, brightly lit, and it wasn't, thank God, trying to recreate the nineteen fifties. Over by the truck-side entrance was a woman in a Carhartt jacket; obviously the truck driver, judging by the remains of a breakfast special and the gallon of coffee she was trying to get through. Two college-age boys sitting at the counter, probably on a date judging by the fact that they were both wearing motorcycle gear, and he'd only seen one bike. On top of that, the taller one was looking at his companion the way Tony looked at Pepper, or Clint looked at his favorite bow. One waitress looking up from her laptop in the corner. Phil'd bet she was a college student, getting in some work during the slow parts of the shift.

And there, tucked into the booth closest to the kitchen entrance, was Jeff Smith, dressed in blue jeans, a grey t-shirt, and an N-Tek blue windbreaker that Phil would bet money hid a shoulder holster. Well, he was wearing one under his own jacket, so it wasn't like he could complain. The college boys had their jackets lying on the ground by their stools, so no shoulder or back holsters, and the taller one, at least, wasn't wearing an ankle holster with those motorcycle boots. The trucker might be carrying, but her posture argued against it, and she was in a pretty bad position to open fire on any of them anyway. With a shrug, Phil made his way across the diner to join Jeff at his booth.

After the usual formalities were done with, (Phil ordered steak and eggs, hashbrowns, and black coffee, Jeff had gone for the chicken fried steak. Somewhere, a cardiologist was crying,) Phil folded his arms and leaned forward across the table.

"Okay, how the hell did you _find_ me?"

Jeff chuckled. "Cheese, one of my people is a Tony Stark-level genius at damn near anything he puts his mind to, especially high-energy physics. And given the circumstances of your… accident and subsequent recovery, you have a very distinctive energy signature, one it wasn't hard to find with satellites already configured to look for unusual energy readings. After that? Berto did something arcane with the cell phone net to get the number of the phone closest to that energy reading, and there we go."

Shaking his head, Phil took a drink of his coffee. "That sounds vaguely Orwellian."

"Wouldn't work with ninety-nine percent of the population, you're just special."

"Gee, thanks. So what exactly did you want to talk about?"

Jeff raised a finger as the waitress came back with their orders. One good thing about the dead of night, there wasn't much of a rush on the kitchen. Once she'd bustled off to check on the trucker, Jeff pulled a small device out of his pocket. Setting it on the table, he tapped the center. Phil heard a slight whining and then nothing, but the taller college kid's head whipped around to give them both an unnaturally blue glare. Jeff smirked, toasting the kid with his coffee cup. Rubbing one ear, the kid rolled his eyes and turned back to his friend.

"Wait. _That_ is your backup?" If those two kids were over twenty, Phil'd eat one of Clint's socks. Underage, unarmed, and the shorter one had about as much muscle on him as a spaghetti strand- what the hell was Jeff thinking?

" _That_ is the biggest mother hen ever to walk the planet, along with the runner-up. I'd intended to come alone, but some arguments just aren't worth having."

Taking a bite of his steak, Jeff chewed and swallowed before continuing. "So. Am I right in thinking that Nick dropped you a bunch of info and put what's left of SHIELD in your hands before buggering off to parts unknown in search of snakes?"

"What makes you think Nick's not dead?"

"Because this is Nicholas Joseph Fury, a man who could lie to his mother about when his birthday was. I'm not going to believe he's dead unless I can check his goddamn pulse. And even then, I'm gonna have the corpse DNA-typed first."

Okay, Phil couldn't argue with that one. He sighed, scooping up a forkful of eggs. "Okay, yes. He did. I haven't looked at any of it yet, it's been a hell of a day."

"I believe it. Anyway, Cheese, the reason I came to look for you? I want to offer you a job. Thing is, SHIELD? Right now, it's poisoned, in the eyes of a lot of of the brass. The rot went deep, and while most of SHIELD were damn good men and women, there's no way to know how many of the ones left free are just HYDRA who didn't get caught in the purge. But the job SHIELD did is still an important one, especially when it comes to shit like alien invasions and weird-ass artifacts."

Phil could see where this was going. "They want N-Tek to take up the slack."

Jeff nodded. "We've got experience with the weird shit, we're flat-out international, and we answer to the UN Security Council, who at least nominally answer to their respective governments. It's more oversight than SHIELD had, and that's going to be important going on."

"How do they know N-Tek wasn't just as compromised? How do you?"

"Oh, we had a few HYDRA infiltrators, but funny thing? They kept having "accidents." Fatal ones."

"... Mairot?"

"Yeah. And when Dread got arrested, he was happy to spill further. Didn't know they were HYDRA, he just said Neo-Nazi cell, but it was enough."

"Didn't want to share, huh?"

Jeff laughed dryly. "Oh, John Dread _hated_ Nazis. He was a very egalitarian monster."

Phil took another sip of his coffee. "Okay. This job… what exactly would it be?"

"With taking on SHIELD's mandate, I'm forming a sub-division in N-Tek, solely focusing on enhanced terrorists and technology. Rachel already has enough on her plate as Director of Operations, so this new division would report to you, and you'd report directly to me. You'd have charge of any enhanced agents- we've only got one right now, but with the world going the way it is, I see that as likely to change. I should also mention, this offer's open to the rest of your team, too. Nick got me dossiers on them, and I know damn well Fitz and Simmons would fit in with Yevchenko's people, your hacker would probably get along too well with cybersecurity, and if you all say yes, I plan to introduce Agent May to Chuck Marshak and then find a bunker to hide in."

Then Jeff grinned at him. "And you'd also be our main liaison when any joint operations came up with the Avengers."

It took effort, but Phil managed to keep his reaction down to a mild blink. "The Avengers aren't coming under your aegis?"

"Do I _look_ like I need another ulcer? Last I heard, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were negotiating with the UN to get the Avengers listed as a UN-chartered NGO. Not too different from N-Tek's situation, actually. So no, I don't have to try and ride herd on that collection of loose cannons, and neither will you. Assuming you say yes, of course."

"... It's a big decision. Can I have some time to talk it over with my team?"

"Oh hell yes, Cheese. You've got my number in that cell phone, after my call. Go back, talk it out, call me when you decide. I've got enough shit to do with the restructuring, I won't need a definitive answer from you for a month. In the meantime, finish your eggs and tell me what's been interesting over the past seventeen years."

"Well, there was the time one of my agents brought home a Russian assassin…"

* * *

"Remind me," Kat declared, as they filed out of the briefing room, "never to play chess with Jefferson Smith."

Berto barely hid a snicker. Lucky for him, Max was apparently late for another appointment and took off in the other direction without hearing him. Otherwise the techie would have probably wound up the victim of a nanotech-powered noogie. Most of the time Kat forgot that Max was three years younger than she was, and Berto four, but sometimes the two of them made it obvious.

"Why is that?" he asked, as Max rapidly moved out of earshot. "Because in one move he managed to acquire most of SHIELD's still- scattered personnel, got us a superior that Max might actually _trust_ , and moved Rachel out of our chain of command?"

"Bingo. The man is _scary_." Seriously, they were all lucky that Smith had never been one of those people who thought they knew what was best for everybody. Even if a lot of the time, he did. Max hadn't fully trusted anyone in authority (with three exceptions) since that mess with Mairot, but if Phil Coulson were the type to sell his people out for money, power, or ideals, the world would already be nine kinds of fucked. Meanwhile, watching Steel and Leeds dance around each other by being utterly professional was just _painful_. Getting Team Steel moved under someone else's supervision meant they could finally get somewhere, even if Kat had to lock them in a sparring room first. She had the perfect one in mind, too…

Berto was watching her with amusement. "Why do I get the feeling he's not the only one scheming around here?"

She wasn't going to deny it. "Hey, I'm still not in his league. I'm still not sure how he talked me into staying with you two yahoos after that mess in the Amazon."

Actually, that wasn't true, she knew exactly how he'd done it. She'd followed him to his office, marshalling every argument she could think of for why sticking her with N-Tek's golden boy and his- admittedly kind of adorable- brainiac backup was the absolute worst idea ever. He'd sat down behind his desk, folded his hands, and before she'd even started, he'd smiled.

"Agent Ryan, I can probably recite word for word the litany you're about to unload on me. He's insufferable, he's reckless, you don't want to be babysitting someone that doesn't have the sense to come in out of the rain, you do your best work by yourself- am I getting warm?"

She'd blinked. "Uh… yes, sir. Kind of."

"Right. I could, of course, just order you to take the assignment, but I don't work that way if I can possibly avoid it, so… please have a seat, let me see if I can convince you."

Kat had taken the offered seat, already feeling slightly uneasy. She did, actually, trust her boss. Smith wasn't a tyrant or petty martinet, and while he didn't always explain command decisions, he always at least listened. At the very least, she owed him the same consideration, but she still felt wary.

"You're right that he's reckless, though some of it's simply that he knows his limits and they're farther out than yours or mine. Beyond that, though, he has some… trust issues. How much do you know about Jean Mairot's departure?"

"I know it turned out he was running info to Dread, got killed in Munich when one of Dread's bases went up. Other than that, not much, sir."

Smith had nodded. "Before that, he'd taken advantage of the mole hunt going on to deliver Max into Dread's hands. For vivisection. At this point, I'm not sure he trusts anyone other than Berto Martinez and Chuck Marshak. I'm not even sure he entirely trusts _me._ "

"I… can't say as I blame him, sir, but I'm not sure I see where I come into this?"

"Because, Agent Ryan, the two of you worked extremely well together, and you saved his life. I don't want him closing himself off from everyone else, and you shouldn't either. For all that N-Tek agents need to be able to operate on their own if the circumstances require it, this is not a field or an organization that is friendly to lone wolves. You and Max are both exceptionally good at your jobs, and given the caliber of opposition I'm going to be sending you up against? I need you to have equally good backup."

Aaand that sounded like… not a threat, but a warning. She could probably argue him out of putting her on Team Steel, but if she didn't let him put her somewhere? Her career was probably going to stall, because he couldn't count on her to do the job he needed. Well, she had to admit, Steel and Martinez both had been a lot easier to work with than she'd thought, when they'd first dropped in on her. And Martinez, at least, wasn't really a pain in the ass.

"Okay, sir, I'm in."

"Excellent." A file had slid across his desk to rest in front of her. Raising an eyebrow at the "Classified" stamp on the cover, she'd opened it up and started leafing through. The very first page had made her stop and look up at him, shock clear.

Smith had sighed. "Yeah. So, Agent Ryan, let me reiterate. I would like you to work with my son, back him up, be someone he can rely on and if possible, keep him from breaking his damn fool neck. You will, of course, receive hazard pay."

She'd smirked back at him then, with a confidence she'd only half-felt. "Sir, you have a deal."

Kat shook her head, pulling herself out of the memory. She'd had a few moments over the past year when she'd wondered just how crazy she'd been for taking Smith up on his challenge, but she couldn't say she regretted it. For one thing, the extra in her paycheck meant she actually had a car that wasn't held together with duct tape and Bondo.

Slinging an arm around Berto's shoulders, she suppressed a grin at the wary look on his face. "Come on, Martinez, let's go get dinner. I'll buy."

His wary look only deepened. "And… what do you want now?"

"Nothing much, just your help with a certain project… do you know how to use a plasma torch?"

Owari


End file.
